CALPERS, which had assets of $233 billion as of June 30, has an annual investment return target of 7.5%, which it had lowered from 7.75% recently.

The data is a bad sign for public pension funds nationally, many of which are under pressure as governments face large budget deficits and face troubles funding their pension commitments.

Stocks in the CALPERS portfolio dropped 7.2% due to turmoil in Europe and slowing economic growth globally, CALPERS said. Real estate was a bright spot and was up 15.9% for the year.

Private equity was actually up 5.4% for the year. While the firm did not release returns data for funds as of June 30, CALPERS' most recent data as of March 31 showed that private equity had a five-year internal rate of return of 7.5%. Venture capital, which is a small piece of PE for CALPERS, had a 4.0% IRR. CALPERS has previously said it is cutting its target exposure to venture capital to 1%.

Not all the funds had return data, but for the ones that did I pulled out their five year internal rate of return for CALPERS. Note also that these may not be all apples to apples, since some funds may be earlier in the investment cycle than others.

Draper Fisher Jurvetson: -3.8%

GGV: 8.2%

Instiutional Venture Partners: N/A

Khosla Ventures: N/A

Lightspeed Venture Partners: 8.4%

New Enterprise Associates: 16.0%

Trinity Ventures: 5.0%

VantagePoint Venture Partners: 4.3%

W Capital Group (not a venture firm but it does secondary investments in VC firms): 11.9%

It's worth noting that a number of top tier venture firms purposely don't take investments from public pension funds because they want to keep their data private.

CALPERS manages retirement benefits for more than 1.6 million California state and local government employees and their families.